fly around in circles
by metacognitive
Summary: She wonders what she's meant to do, now. Post-season 1 finale, pre-season 2.


Title: fly around in circles  
Summary: She wonders what she's meant to do, now. Post-season 1 finale, pre-season 2.  
Character(s): Asami Sato, various mentioned  
Notes: bad grammar is intentional so please bear with me. Quote from Ana Castillo's poem, "Alternatives." Title from Adele's "Chasing Pavements." I own nothing! First LOK fic, concrit appreciated.

* * *

it would be October because autumn is when bones turn yellow and  
all things return to what they once were or really never stopped  
being.

* * *

Asami sits down in the mansion she had called home and thinks. She doesn't cry, even though she thinks that maybe that would a good idea. It's not every day that your father turns on you eagerly, and yet she's sitting in an empty mansion that's been burglarized and ripped up, scorch marks on the ceilings that she almost wishes were Mako's. Then she remembers the way he looked at Korra and has to blink the tears away.

It's almost funny, that she should be so ready to cry and lay down her entire life for a boy she's known only a few weeks but he made her feel safe, she wasn't lying when she said that. There was something about the set of his mouth and the way he always looked so serious, and no one could say he wasn't a good older brother. He had responsible tendencies—at least, for everyone else. It wasn't quite the same for Asami. But how perverse that she had been so willing when it came to Mako and her father and they both left her in the end, with betrayals that don't compare but that hurt nonetheless.

How to do you move on, she wants to ask, but Asami doesn't have anyone left to ask anymore. Her place on the steps offers a wide few of the parlor, of the door and the finely carved walls and pillars, stained glass windows that used to play over her mother's skin as they ran through the halls. Red and purple and blue everywhere. Asami takes a wet breath, then, presses her hands to her mouth. She wants to wail like the women on the radio shows do, when their beloved dies. This is a bit different, she tells herself, but the sentiment is the same.

She was just a kid, just like Mako, just like Noatok. Amon. How different could her fate had been, if her father had raised her to be the person he thought she should become? She didn't get to mourn, all those years ago. Asami isn't sure if she's allowed to anymore—her father isn't dead. It still feels like he is, though. The sun hits the floor in shattered patterns and Asami frowns, and when she finally pulls her hands away from her face she finds them wet. What a shame, she muses, what a shame to be the last of the Sato family. To be so alone and not know what's even left to do.

Everything has changed and she's the only one left to deal with it. Asami wasn't a stupid child, but looking back on it, she was a fool. Her memories alone would prove that her father wasn't always the monster he would be remembered as, but what good are a little girl's opinions? He was good and bad and all the shades in between, just like every other person in the world. Just like Asami.

She's lost everything and nothing at all and she's just so tired, and the tears that started slowly are too much for her to handle. What about the house servants who helped raise her? She loved them, despite them being employees, and she had always wanted their love, too. She used to play hide-and-seek in the rooms, used to drag the cook away from the kitchen to make him tell her stories. He was born on Kyoshi Island and had great tales about sea serpents, and recounted countless legends of the warrior's adventures. His aunt had fought for the Avatar, but all he wanted to do was cook. And she had said that he was a very good cook, and that she was glad he did _not_ go on adventures, but she would go on many for him. So many.

So _naïve._

Were they all part of Amon's movement? Were they non-benders, or did some hide it? She can't even remember anymore. Briefly, she wonders if it would have made a difference if a waterbender had killed her mother. Or if she'd fallen down a flight of stairs. Or if it had been by someone in a Sato-mobile.

Asami laughs, says out loud, "What then, Dad? Would you have shut down the company?" and then quieter, as she chokes down a sob, "Killed yourself and me? Do I. Do I still look like her, Dad?" The words echo in the empty building. It doesn't feel like home anymore, and for so long it had been a haven. For so long, her father had been all she had left and he had been everything to her—with the opposite true, too. It's hard to make it make sense; if Asami's honest, she'll admit that doesn't want to. Yet she will. She has to, really.

She looks down, runs a hand over the red carpet of the steps . There's a thick layer of dust already, all over the house and lingering in the air. It hovers, stagnant, when the light hits it, and there's something beautiful in the emptiness of this house, filled with too many shadows and secrets for Asami to deal with anymore. She says hoarsely, "How much is too much?" before getting up, and disappearing into the empty house's rooms, the scent of ash heavy on her tongue.

.

.

.


End file.
